Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (mobile ebook reader .txt) 📖

nothing about throwing the glove in the lady’s face. It is also mentioned by Urrea in his translation of Ariosto, 1549, and by Garci Sanchez de Badajoz; and it is the subject of a ballad, probably of the fifteenth century, in Timoneda’s Rosa de Romances, 1573. Viardot, in a note on this passage in his translation, says that the surname of “de León” was conferred by Isabella in commemoration of the feat. As a member of the Spanish Academy he ought to have known that in that case the title would have been “del León;” and, in the next place, that the noble family of the Ponces had borne the addition to their name since the end of the twelfth century, when Pedro Ponce de Minerva married Aldonza, natural daughter of Alfonso IX of León. Unfortunately, the reverse of Viardot’s theory is far the more probable one; that the story was invented to account for the name by some ballad-maker ignorant of the family history of the Ponces. ↩

The Perrillo⁠—i.e. the little dog⁠—was the trademark of Julian del Rei, a famous armourer and swordsmith of Toledo and Saragossa. ↩

E.g. Amadís, Esplandián, Belianis, the Caballero del Febo, and others. “The Knight of the Lions” was one of the titles adopted by Amadís. ↩

Proverb 39. ↩

Many houses in the old towns of Northern and Central Spain are so decorated to this day. ↩

The beginning of Garcilaso’s tenth sonnet, imitated from Virgil, Aeneid Lib. IV: “Dulces exuviae, dum fata deusque sinebant.” ↩

A hit at the prolixity not only of the romances of chivalry, but of more modern works. ↩

Not that sea-wolf skin was a specific, but because, like many suffering from ailments in the region of the loins, he found a baldric passing over the shoulder easier than the ordinary sword-belt. ↩

Cervantes himself won a first prize at Saragossa in 1595. ↩

Alluding to Pesce-Cola, or Pece Colan, the famous swimmer of Catania, who lived towards the end of the fifteenth century. ↩

Entreverado, i.e. like bacon that is mixed fat and lean. ↩

“Nunquam inducant animum cantare rogati,
Injussi nanquam desistant.”

↩

Glossed verses, versos glosados, of the sort imitated here, were among the literary frivolities indulged in by the sixteenth and seventeenth century poets in Spain. Lope claims them as a Spanish invention, but Ticknor traces them to the Provençal poets. The Provençal glosses, however, were not constructed on the same principle. In Saa de Miranda’s Obras (1595), a gloss on some lines of Jorge Manrique’s is described as “ao costume daquelles tempos,” which may imply that they came into fashion at the beginning of the sixteenth century. ↩

This sonnet is a caricature, and by no means an overcharged one, of the sonnet style of the Culto school, which at this time had nearly attained its highest influence. Indeed, it might easily pass muster as a fair specimen, not perhaps of Góngora, but of any of the minor cultoristas. ↩

Literally, “among the hosts of consumed poets.” Possibly Cervantes meant by the word “lean,” “starving,” but it also has the meaning I have given, which, perhaps⁠—“genus irritabile vatum”⁠—is the more likely one. ↩

See notes to Chapter XXII. ↩

Cervantes seems to have introduced the “discreet” Don Diego de Miranda as a sort of contrast to Don Quixote. Possibly it was from these chapters that Theodore Agrippa d’Aubigné took the idea of his Sieur Enay and Baron Foeneste. ↩

In the sword-dances the dancers carried swords with which they made cuts and passes at each other, the art of the performance consisting in going as near as possible without doing any injury. The bell-dancers wore a dress hung with little bells after the fashion of the morris-dancers in England. The peculiar agility of the shoe-dancers⁠—zapateadores⁠—was shown by striking the sole of the shoe with the palm of the hand. ↩

Proverb 162. ↩

Proverb 82. ↩

Sayago, a district between Zamora and the Portuguese frontier. From the time of Alfonso X the Castilian of Toledo was always regarded as the standard. ↩

The Zocodover, the chief plaza of Toledo, and the Sok, or marketplace, in the time of the Moors. The cathedral cloisters are to this day a favourite lounge in that sunbaked city. ↩

Majalahonda (properly Majadahonda), a small village a couple of leagues to the northwest of Madrid. ↩

Mandoble is described in the Academy Dictionary as a cut or stroke delivered with both hands, but Arrieta explains it as one given by a turn of the wrist. ↩

To fall off one’s donkey, caer de su borrico or burro, a popular phrase for owning that one has been in the wrong. ↩

Proverb 60. ↩

Count Dirlos was the brother of Durandarte and hero of one of the ballads of the Carlovingian cycle. His name seems to have come to be used somewhat in the same fashion as that of “The Marquis of Carabas.” V. Qaevedo’s Gran Tacaño, chapter XII. ↩

The tinajas or jars used for storing wine in La Mancha are sometimes seven or eight feet high, and nearly as much in diameter at the widest part. ↩

The sword-dance was exceedingly dangerous, so much so that it was prohibited in course of time. ↩